NEW NET Issues List for 09 Jun 2009

Below is the final list of issues for the TUESDAY, 09 June 2009, NEW NET (Northeast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 pm weekly gathering. This week we're upstairs at Tom's Drive In, 501 N Westhill Blvd, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

The ‘net

1. Bing overtakes Yahoo search? Unlikely… http://searchengineland.com/did-bing-leapfrog-yahoo-not-exactly-20566 “…data issued by StatCounter from Thursday. These data reportedly show that yesterday the share of searches went like this: * Google: 71.47 percent * Bing: 16.28 percent * Yahoo: 10.22 percent...To get a reality check on these numbers and discover whether Bing had in fact surpassed Yahoo we reached out to Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore and Compete…What these data collectively show — and we’ll update if/when we get more — is that Bing has received a potentially significant traffic bump compared to Live Search/MSN since launch and rollout of the marketing campaign on TV and online. However Bing has (so far) not surpassed Yahoo for the number two spot…” [http://www.pcworld.com/article/166201/bings_early_lead_over_yahoo_not_end_of_race.html ]

2. PayPal, Picnik, Zumo Drive come to Yahoo Mail http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10257866-2.html “Yahoo has added new applications for its users in another step toward giving its users more and more to do from within Yahoo. The company plans to announce the limited beta of three new Yahoo Mail applications from PayPal, Picnik, and Zumo Drive on Friday…It's all part of Yahoo's Open Strategy, designed to let outside developers tap into the company's properties and offer their wares inside Yahoo's network of sites…”

3. You Have Three Days To Pick Your Facebook Vanity URL http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/you-have-three-days-to-pick-your-facebook-vanity-url/ “What are you doing this Friday night? Going to a bar with friends? Going to a movie? Wrong. If you’re a real web addict you’ll be sitting at your computer waiting for the clock to strike 12:01 AM Eastern Time. That’s when Facebook’s new vanity URLs are going to go live, and the landrush to get one will begin…”

4. Cc:Betty Raises $1.5 Million For Email Organization Assistant http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/ccbetty-raises-15-million-for-email-organization-assistant/ “…Cc:Betty is a service that routes, parses, and organizes email conversations in a simple at-a-glance dashboard so you never have to scour your inbox to find the bits and pieces of a long thread. If you cc “betty@ccbetty.com” on any email, “she” will create a mailspace, which is a webpage, for your entire email thread and will divide important things such as dates, times, people, places, and files and will format them all in one place. Cc:Betty will track messages with up to 100 recipients and can organize emails with up to 20 MB in size, including attachments…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

5. China Demands New PCs Have Web Site-blocking Program http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166280/china_demands_new_pcs_have_web_siteblocking_program.html “China will require that Web filtering software be included with all computers sold in the country, another step up in its efforts to control pornography and other content on the Internet. The move follows a government crackdown on online smut that has led to the closure of thousands of Web sites this year, and concern that such campaigns could expand to target content that is political rather than pornographic. PC makers will be required to pre-install the Web site-blocking program or offer it on a CD-ROM included with all PCs…”

6. Man Hopes to Cash In On Speed Camera Law http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/07/AR2009060702107.html “Steven Forage, a software salesman who spends at least five hours a day in his car, juggles a lot on the road: finalizing deals over the phone, sipping coffee, checking e-mail. One thing he no longer worries about, though, is speed cameras. "Fuzz alert," an electronic voice called out from the console of his Cadillac recently as it approached a speed enforcement camera in Montgomery County…The system, known as PhantomAlert, feeds the locations of speed cameras and red-light cameras into standard Global Positioning System devices and prompts the devices to warn drivers when they are near one…”

7. Could Twittering about your vacation put your home at risk? http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2009-06-08-twitter-vacation_N.htm “…Like a lot of people who use social media, Israel Hyman and his wife Noell went on Twitter to share real-time details of a recent trip. Their posts said they were "preparing to head out of town," that they had "another 10 hours of driving ahead," and that they "made it to Kansas City." While they were on the road, their home in Mesa, Ariz., was burglarized. Hyman has an online video business called IzzyVideo.com, with 2,000 followers on Twitter. He thinks his Twitter updates tipped the burglars off…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

8. Palm Pre: better than iPhone or Blackberry Bold http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10257267-17.html “…I started to feel the Palm Pre itch. I researched it. I wrote about it. I did everything I could to see whether it was something I would want. CNET posted its review of the Palm Pre this week and, well, that ended the debate: I'm buying a Palm Pre. I'll be carrying two smartphones around once again. I'm working hard at reducing my obsession with tech…But the Palm Pre's features are too engaging. The design is too appealing. I can't help myself…One of my biggest issues with the iPhone (and other smartphones I've owned) is its inability to adequately provide me with the multitasking I need. It's a cool device, but I'm somewhat of a power user. Not being able to easily switch between apps is a real pain. But Palm's device changes all that. The Pre lets you launch another app without exiting the program you're currently running. I think it's a major advancement. You shouldn't be forced to lose your place just to open another application…”

9. How Real-Time Cellphone Data Can Impact Local Economies http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/nyc_waterfalls_real-time_cellphone_data.php “…We also spoke to Andrea Vaccari, a research associate at SENSEable City Lab, about a project as yet unpublished on their website. This project analyzed the economic impact from tourists, via cellphone data, of a huge art project the city of New York helped sponsor in 2008: four man-made waterfalls hosted around NYC from June to October…The project was commissioned by the Public Art Fund and was supported by the city of New York, which paid an estimated $20 million for it. The return was said to be about $69 million in total economic impact in New York City, due to tourists and other benefits of the waterfalls…”

10. Palm Pre on Verizon in January http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/08/palm-pre-on-verizon-in-january/ “Sprint better market the heck out of the Palm Pre over the next seven months. That’s because rival Verizon Wireless will be carrying the touch-screen device in its stores in January, according to a person familiar with the situation…”

11. What the iPhone 3GS and 3.0 OS Means for Geo Devs http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/iphone-3gs-and-30-os-geo-mapping.html “…iPhone 3GS and new 3.0 OS…significant to consumers and developers. Here are some of the changes that will make geo devs happy…Developers can now take advantage of Google Maps within their apps. This means that you no longer have to building your own mapping system for your native apps…The new camera is 3MP and has video capabilities. Awesome, but more importantly for geo developers it has an auto-focus macro-mode. This will allow users to take pictures of small Barcodes and QR Codes…The digital compass provides orientation to the phone. With orientation apps that layer virtual information (AKA Augmented Reality) over the camera view become possible…”

Open Source

12. Freeplane pushing for visibility http://www.mind-mapping.org/blog/2009/06/freeplane-pushing-for-visibility/ “I’ve been meaning to add Freeplane to mind-mapping.org for a while, but its alpha status was holding me back. Now I’ve heard from Ryan Wesley, Freeplane’s project manager, that overall it is pretty stable…It is an open source and free mind-mapping program that resulted from the forking of the FreeMind code base 18 months ago. FreeMind developers had different ideas about how that software should develop, and the result was a split…”

13. A Class on Open Source Courseware http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/17742-a-class-on-open-source-courseware “…Colleges and universities have long been proficient contributors to free and open source software projects, dating back to the early days of the Internet, so it should come as no surprise that they create open source software no meet their own operational needs. One of the biggest fields is online courseware--specialized content management systems for teachers and academic departments that facilitates Web-based course content, interaction with students, and grading and reporting. Also known as "course management systems" (CMS) or "learning management systems" (LMS), they are database-intensive, often support thousands of users at a time, and must interface with a wide gamut of third-party and legacy systems for record-keeping and billing, making them ripe for an open development model…”

14. SSH Tunnels: Using a service from a nated (twice) box http://maratux.blogspot.com/2009/06/ssh-tunnels-using-service-from-nated.html “…both my box and the linux box are nated, so they can't reach each other. Let me say it was a real PITA. The keyboard layouts were getting on my nerves. Some important keys didn't work sometimes... or at all (like ; or @ or ', etc). After a while I was encouraged enough to dig for a solution to get access to the SSH service of the linux box directly (or almost) instead of depending on this mess I was using. First, let me introduce SSH tunnels before I dig into the actual solution to my problem…”

SkyNet

15. Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/06/use-microsoft-outlook-with-google-apps.html “…Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook lets you use Microsoft Outlook seamlessly with Google Apps Premier or Education Editions. Many business users prefer Gmail's interface and features to products they've used in the past. But sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, we've developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It enables Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. And they can always use Gmail's web interface to access their information when they're not on their work computer…”

16. Introducing smart navigation in Street View http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-smart-navigation-in-street.html “…Street View is a great way to see panoramas of streets from all over the world. We've launched some great improvements to this tool, including most recently overlaying user photos and the ability to view Street View in fullscreen. Until now though, the usual way to navigate through Street View has remained the forward and backward arrows along the roads which move you to the next immediate panorama…You can now use Street View's smart navigation to travel to a new place just by double clicking on the place or object you would like to see…”

17. Google Adds Editing Tools to Online Translation http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166369/google_adds_editing_tools_to_online_translation.html “…Google has brought out a translator toolkit that combines the company's machine translation technology with online tools for manually editing content. An earlier product, Google translate, allowed users to translate and read Web sites and plain text in a number of languages. The new translator toolkit targets users who want to edit and polish the translated text, and share or publish it…”

General Technology

18. Apple Cuts Prices Strategically http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc2009068_279416.htm “…Apple ended the suspense at a company event for software developers on June 8, cutting the price on the most recent version of its iPhone and some versions of its MacBook Pro line of laptops. But far from slashing prices willy nilly, Apple made targeted cuts likely to help it win share without sacrificing the earnings gains that have powered an 80% increase in the stock price since mid-January, to 140. The most dramatic move was to cut by half the price of today's iPhone 3G, to $99…Apple also announced a faster, pricier new model that could help make up the difference. Called the iPhone 3G S—"the S is for speed," Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller told the crowd at San Francisco's Moscone Center—the device will cost $199 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage and $299 for a 32GB model…Despite the rise of inexpensive netbooks based on Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows software costing as little as $200, Apple didn't bring out a cheaper entry-level model. Instead, it lowered the price of various versions of its higher-end MacBook Pro laptops by $300. At the same time, it beefed up the capabilities of one of its more affordable offerings, the MacBook Pro with a 13-inch screen. Now tricked out with more memory, a better screen, and a longer-life battery, the device has been repositioned at the low end of the top-shelf MacBook Pro line. "Yesterday, it cost $2,000 to own a MacBook Pro," says Gartner (IT) analyst Van Baker. "Today, it costs $1,199. This is Apple doing what it's always done: It goes after the higher-end customer…The new iPhone 3G S includes a higher-resolution camera, with software tricks such as the ability to focus on your subject by simply tapping on the screen. And it's the first iPhone that can be used to record video…”

19. Software designed to make older drivers sharper http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/07/BUKN180CJC.DTL “…He believes what saved him was the 40 minutes a day he spent using brain fitness software that supposedly improves reaction time and peripheral vision. The program was part of an experiment run by Allstate Insurance and Posit Science, a San Francisco software startup…Posit is one of at least five Bay Area firms that design products based on the theory that the human brain can be rewired and improved no matter what its age…USA Hockey last year signed a partnership to develop brain fitness software for its players, and the Army is using it to screen soldiers before they're deployed. This week there is a conference in Boston to discuss games and brain health…Allstate is experimenting with the software because it wants its customers who are over 50 to become better drivers so they have fewer accidents…Allstate and Posit continue to refine the driving experiment. Although Allstate sent letters to 100,000 of its Pennsylvania customers, age 50 to 75, inviting them to try the software, only about 8,000 did, even though Allstate rewarded them with gas cards…”

20. The connected car http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13725743 “…A modern car can have as many as 200 on-board sensors, measuring everything from tyre pressure to windscreen temperature. A high-end Lexus contains 67 microprocessors, and even the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano, has a dozen. Voice-driven satellite navigation is routinely used by millions of people. Radar-equipped cruise control allows vehicles to adjust their speed automatically in traffic. Some cars can even park themselves. Once a purely mechanical device, the car is going digital. “Connected cars”, which sport links to navigation satellites and communications networks—and, before long, directly to other vehicles—could transform driving, preventing motorists from getting lost, stuck in traffic or involved in accidents…It started with a satnav. The best known connected-car technology is satellite navigation, which uses the global-positioning system (GPS) in conjunction with a database of roads to provide directions and find points of interest. In America there were fewer than 3m navigational devices on the road in 2005, nearly half of which were built in to vehicles. But built-in systems tend to be expensive, are not extensible, and may quickly be out of date. So drivers have been taking matters into their own hands: of the more than 33m units on the road today, nearly 90% are portable, sitting on the dashboard or stuck to the windscreen…”

Leisure & Entertainment

21. 'Wii hacker' part of Microsoft's Natal effort http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10254466-56.html “Johnny Chung Lee, the former Carnegie Mellon researcher known for finding creative ways to adapt the Wiimote, has revealed himself as one of the minions behind Project Natal, Microsoft's effort to add motion-sensing capabilities into the Xbox 360…At times, working on this project has felt like a miniature 'Manhattan project' with developers and researchers from around the world to coming together to make this happen," Lee wrote. "We would all love to one day have our own personal holodeck. This is a pretty measurable step in that direction…”

22. Behold the motion-sensitive controller wars http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10255497-235.html “…We're in the motion-sensitive controller wars. That much became clear Tuesday when, following on Monday's announcement by Microsoft that it was working on Project Natal, an impressive and complex full-body, hands-free motion-sensitive control system, both Nintendo and Sony revealed plans for new, advanced systems of their own…Sony and Microsoft are offering something entirely new, and will certainly have little trouble building marketing campaigns around them once they're ready to go on sale…it's clear there is exactly one guaranteed winner: consumers. Until now, people who wanted a true motion-sensitive controller had only one choice: the Wii. Now--or rather, when the technology hits the market--people who are considering buying a video game console will be able to choose whichever system they want…”

23. Vitality Sensor another example of Nintendo's creative drive http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2009312228_brier08.html “If there were an award for the most radical gadget shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, my nominee wouldn't be Microsoft's motion-sensing controller Natal. It would be the Vitality Sensor unveiled by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. It's basically a heart-rate monitor that clamps on your finger like the ones hospitals use, but it attaches to the Wii to control new games the company is developing…Vitality Sensor will allow people to "see the information related to the inner world of your body," said Iwata, 49. Games using the device could be designed for relaxation instead of stimulation and excitement…”

Economy and Technology

24. Intuit Buying PayCycle for $170 Million http://www.pehub.com/41167/intuit-buys-paycycle/ “…Intuit Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to purchase PayCycle Inc., one of the nation’s fastest-growing online payroll services, serving more than 85,000 small businesses. The cash transaction is valued at approximately $170 million, subject to adjustment. Privately held PayCycle, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is a leader in online payroll for small businesses, accountants and financial institutions…We’ll offer small businesses a range of low-cost, high-value alternatives to expensive payroll outsourcers…”

25. Intel buys Wind River for $884 million http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090604/tc_pcworld/intelbuyswindrivertopushlinux “…Intel agreed to buy Wind River for US$884 million. The acquisition should help both Intel's prominence in the Linux space and its efforts to push the OS in smartphones and mobile Internet devices, analysts said. Wind River offers embedded Linux operating systems and is a leader in software design tools for devices such as smartphones…”

26. A Visit to Microsoft and Google http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090601/joel-spolsky-a-visit-to-microsoft-and-google.html “…my partner Michael Pryor and I decided to take a week and head to the West Coast for some Stack Overflow evangelism. First stop: Microsoft, where a bunch of smart people had expressed interest in finding a way to work with us…I worked at Microsoft in the early 1990s, and the place has changed quite a lot since then. When I left, the company had about 10,000 workers worldwide and was headquartered on a cozy campus of a dozen or so buildings, all of them within easy walking distance of one another…The company has grown like kudzu, the result of a policy of continuous, aggressive hiring. Microsoft now employs 90,000 people worldwide, and its staff in Redmond, Washington, fills 94 buildings. The campus spreads out over the area of a small city…After Microsoft, we headed to Silicon Valley to demo Stack Overflow before a crowd of about 100 developers at Google's burgeoning new complex…Now, Google -- which has 10,000 workers worldwide -- is very different from Microsoft, and the two businesses have very different cultures, which is evident when you visit them one after another. When you are a guest on Google's campus, for example, you get free Wi-Fi service. You simply connect to one of the open hot spots that blanket the area, and you're ready to go. Microsoft has free Wi-Fi, too, but to use it, you have to register with a receptionist who enters your name, your affiliation, your e-mail address, and the name of the person you're visiting into some kind of computer system, which then spits out a page with a temporary password…”

Civilian Aerospace

27. SFF and Heinlein Trust $5,000 NewSpace Business Plan Prize http://spacefrontier.org/2009/06/05/submission-deadline-extended-for-sff-and-heinlein-trust-5000-newspace-business-plan-prize/ “The Space Frontier Foundations’ Heinlein Business Plan Competition is actively seeking Executive Summaries from companies that can demonstrate how their product or service is related or beneficial to the commercial space industry. Due to the continued interest in the competition after the International Space Development Conference, the Space Frontier Foundation has decided to extend the deadline for submissions by two weeks to allow teams more time to put together their 3 - 5 page summary. The new deadline is June 19th, 2009…”

28. Inflatable tower could climb to the edge of space http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227117.000-inflatable-tower-could-climb-to-the-edge-of-space.html “A GIANT inflatable tower could carry people to the edge of space without the need for a rocket, and could be completed much sooner than a cable-based space elevator, its proponents claim…If built from a suitable mountain top it could reach an altitude of around 20 kilometres, where it could be used for atmospheric research, tourism, telecoms or launching spacecraft…”

29. Life support pilot plant paves the way to Moon http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMKNIVTGVF_index_0.html “A pilot plant inaugurated yesterday in Barcelona, Spain, is testing regenerative life support system technologies that could one day recycle waste products and supply essential food, water and oxygen to humans living on the surface of the Moon or Mars. MELiSSA, short for Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative, is an artificial ecosystem to recover food, water and oxygen from waste (faeces and urine), carbon dioxide and minerals. The laboratory will help in the development of technology for a future regenerative life support system for long-duration human space exploration missions, for example to a lunar base or to Mars…”

30. Space 2.X: The Private Rocket Race Takes Off http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/gallery_spacex/ “…Eschewing the traditional startup trappings of two college grads eating ramen, watching Adult Swim and coding until the wee hours of the night, SpaceX instead employs hundreds of brainiacs and builds its rockets in a massive hangar that once housed a 747 fuselage factory. Started in 2002 by PayPal founder Elon Musk, SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) brings a startup mentality to launching rockets into orbit, which until recently was almost exclusively government turf. The hope is that minimal bureaucracy, innovation and in-house manufacturing and testing can be used to put payloads into space at roughly one-tenth the cost of traditional methods…”

31. Southeast Valley becoming aerospace business hub http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/06/01/20090601biz-mr-aerospace0602.html “…the aerospace industry is the southeast Valley's payroll leader, one of the region's largest employers and a workplace for some of Arizona's top research talent. Collectively, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa and Tempe are home to more than 200 private firms, a state university, community college and an Air Force lab, all of which are engaged in a range of aerospace manufacturing and research, from helicopter assembly to space technology. In March, a group of influential business, government and academic leaders warned that Arizona's $3.8 billion annual aerospace payroll could dwindle unless determined efforts are made to expand the industry by supplying the science and engineering talent it demands…”

32. Space Travel Is a Real Headache http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090602-space-headache.html “…study of 17 astronauts found that the majority of them experienced painful headaches when they traveled beyond Earth. The findings prompted doctors to call for designating space headaches as a new "secondary disorder." Space headaches have been reported before, but until now they were thought to be related to the common motion sickness astronauts experience in space. The new study found that the two maladies are not actually connected. "Our research shows that space flights may trigger headaches without other space motion sickness symptoms in otherwise super healthy subjects…”

33. "Pillownaut" Stays in Bed for the Sake of Science http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-06/pillownaut-stays-bed-sake-science “…Scientists have a pretty good notion of what will happen to your body when you're walking on the moon or traveling gravity-free for two years en route to Mars -- thanks to a cadre of bed-ridden test subjects. Twice in the past year, self-described "pillownaut" Heather Archuletta agreed to lie still for what some Americans might consider a nice break -- she signed up to snooze in the name of science…It might sound too good to be true, but beware -- leaky eyes, throbbing feet, and bed pans await you. "You have this notion in your head of, 'Oh, I can do it.' But it is strange to feel everything that changes," said Archuletta, 39. "You don't think about it; oh, God, you just feel pain. But when you learn why the body compensates the way it does, it is actually very enlightening…”

34. Cirque founder heads to space station http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1663958 “…Guy Laliberté, the billionaire founder of Cirque du Soleil, provided the first details of what he is calling a "poetic social mission" to space. Spending roughly US$35-million from his personal fortune for the privilege, Mr. Laliberté has been training and undergoing medical exams in Russia since his arrival on May 10 at the Star City cosmonaut facility outside Moscow. He is scheduled to blast off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 30, becoming the first Canadian space tourist…The first artist in space, he wants to draw on his show-business experience to deliver a message from the heavens about the importance of providing access to clean water. It is an issue he has championed since creating the One Drop Foundation in 2007 with a commitment of $100-million…Mr. Laliberté, the father of five children, said he has evaluated the risks associated with the voyage and has "no fear." But he is nonetheless taking part in a the filming of a documentary about his life and accomplishments "to make peace" with himself before his departure…”

35. SpaceShipTwo success puts fatal explosion in the past http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227116.400-spaceshiptwo-success-puts-fatal-explosion-in-the-past.html “…Virgin Galactic's commercial spacecraft may be one step closer after the successful testing last week of a new solid-liquid hybrid rocket motor. The test follows a review of a fatal explosion in 2007…An enquiry, involving NASA, recommended new safety measures for the motor, including switching the composite fuel tank liners to metal, using helium to pressurise both the fuel and inert volatile vapours, and eradicating potential contaminants. The new motor is "a scaled-up version of the SpaceShipOne rocket motor", says Virgin Galactic's president Will Whitehorn. "There are some changes since the first motor was designed, mainly related to additional safety features such as a helium tank…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

36. Nvidia's Plan For Beating Moore's Law http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/02/nvidia-gpu-graphics-technology-intelligent-technology-huang.html “…Jen-Hsun Huang started Nvidia in 1993 and has transformed the company into a formidable $3 billion (revenue) powerhouse in the field for graphics chips…In a world increasingly dominated by video, Huang believes that graphics processing is leading to powerful changes in the computing environment. This is a transcript of a recent interview with Forbes…we came at a perfect time, you know, that the CPU kind of hit the wall and everybody's looking at multi-core. But multi-core, the results didn't live up to the promise. And here we are with our technology called Cuda [a C-based architecture for coding in GPU] and GPU computing. And all of a sudden the speed-up is 50 times, 100 times, 200 times. And people are just astonished by the speed-ups. When was the last time that anything sped up a computer application that anyone used 50 times?…”

37. GP GPU & CUDA Tutorials from the DOD http://www.vizworld.com/2009/06/general-purpose-gpu-cuda-tutorials-from-the-dod/ “Even the US Department of Defense is getting into CUDA & GPGPU, and their Data Analysis & Assessment Center (DAAC) have begun posting a good set of very detailed tutorials on their website. The DAAC is a division of the DoD’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), which specializing in maintaining and running supercomputers for various defense researchers…”

38. NextIO, NVIDIA Partner to Advance CUDA http://www.hpcwire.com/offthewire/NextIO-NVIDIA-Partner-to-Advance-CUDA-Development-46916932.html “…NextIO's technology allows servers to take full advantage of two or more GPUs at PCIe speeds, enabling the application of multi-GPU solutions to high-performance compute problems…The NextIO management framework allows servers to be mapped across PCIe up to 10 GPUs simultaneously. Server connections can be changed "on the fly" based on development or application demands…Our customers in the oil and gas, medical imaging, and simulation markets have been demanding low- cost, high-performance GPU solutions from NextIO as a means to scale their compute applications…”

39. Does parallel processing require new languages? http://gcn.com/blogs/tech-blog/2009/06/new-parallel-processing-languages.aspx “…Now that almost all new servers and computers are running processors with multiple cores, the software-design community is trying to figure out the best way of making use of this new architecture. Unfortunately, the community is divided about what the best way would to split their programs across these multiple cores. Getting the full workload of multicore processors can be tricky because, in order for a program to make use of more than one core, it must divvy its workload in such a way that it doesn't take more effort than the gains achieved by adding more cores. Most programming languages were written assuming just one processor would be working through the code sequentially, line by line…”

40. So You Want To Build A Cluster http://www.hpccommunity.org/f55/so-you-want-build-cluster-five-things-consider-before-you-start-578/ “…what to know and what you should think about before you build your cluster. Perhaps you are familiar with Linux and X86 hardware, but without a good cluster background many of the ideas or methods may seem mysterious. Maybe you have already looked at several of the "how to build a cluster" articles and noticed they all seem to be doing things a bit differently. Not to worry. There is nothing really new or secret about clusters, although building, running, and maintaining them does require basic skills. Good Linux/Unix administration experience is very helpful, as is a good understanding of networking and storage issues. If you don't have these skills you will certainly get a chance to develop them building a cluster! Let's begin by considering the building blocks of a cluster system…”

41. Top Trends in High Performance Computing http://www.top500.org/blog/2009/05/20/top_trends_high_performance_computing “…what are the trends in the nearest future which will form the basis for all these performance predictions. The major challenges to all processor requirements for HPC systems now and in the future will be: low cost, low power consumption, availability of support for parallel programming, and efficient porting of existing codes… As a consequence to all this Multi-Core technology, parallel computing is clearly becoming a MUST. Parallel computation could dramatically increase the speed, efficiency and performance of HPC systems but going from 1 to more Central Processing Units (or Cores) might be not an easy task…The growing number of computational components within the hardware architecture means big efforts for the parallelization of application programs. The shift to the parallel paradigm will be a tough task because there are a lot of programs that have been developed under the premise of a single-core technology…”

*****